LOS ANGELES – The American Society of Cinematographers (www.theasc.com) will honor filmmaker Spike Lee with its Board of Governors Award at the 38th Annual ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards Gala on March 3rd in Beverly Hills. Lee was chosen for the ASC Board of Governors Award for his significant and indelible contributions to cinema. This ASC honor is reserved for collaborators who are champions for directors of photography and the visual art form.
“Spike Lee is one of the most brilliant filmmakers of our time and the social impact of his work is immeasurable,” says ASC president Shelly Johnson. “This award celebrates his respect for the partnership between director and cinematographer, and how two people unite to tell a visual story in a way that can only be recognized as that of collaboration.”
Lee is a director, writer, actor, producer, author and NYU tenured professor. His body of work over the last three decades includes She’s Gotta Have It (1986), Do the Right Thing (1989), Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Summer of Sam (1999), Bamboozled (2000), Chi- Raq (2015) and BlacKkKlansman (2019). He founded the production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks in 1983 and has also directed and produced numerous music videos. In 1988, he got into commercial production with the Nike Air Jordan campaign.
Lee joined the faculty at NYU’s Tisch School Graduate Film Program, where he was appointed artistic director, in 2002. The Spike Lee Film Production Fund is an endowed fund providing annual productions or post production awards to students in the NYU Tisch Graduate Film Program. Since its inception in 1989, 92 students have been awarded $1,000,000.
Previous recipients of the ASC Board of Governors include Viola Davis, Sofia Coppola, Jeff Bridges, Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, Ridley Scott, Barbra Streisand, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Christopher Nolan, Morgan Freeman, Francis Ford Coppola, Sally Field, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg, among others.